The Dark Legend of Zelda
by Verunme
Summary: A dark fantasy take on The Legend of Zelda. The story of the final war between light and darkness. Rated M for implied rape and extreme graphic violence.
1. Prologue

Disclaimer: I do not own The Legend of Zelda franchise or anything related to it except the merchandise I bought.

Just to warn you, I first wrote this fic in french, but as there is a much larger audience in english, I translated it. Considering my knowledge of english is much lower than that of french, please forgive (or notice/correct) me for any translation/writing mishaps.

This idea came to me after finishing Dragon Age II while waiting for Skyward Sword's release. I was wondering what would a Zelda story look in such a dark, depressive and violent world. There is the result :

The Dark Legend of Zelda

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><p><strong>Prologue<strong>

He could feel the warmth of the sun on his skin, the soft spring breeze brushing him as his rocking chair gave him a well deserved relaxation.

But it would not last long.

It was the middle of the afternoon. Rauru had quickly learned, during his years of teaching at Castle Town's Elementary School, that kids never, ever, forgot that friday was story day. That was the day during which he told the old Legends. Those of the Heros who had allowed the world to be what it was that day.

As to confirm his thoughts, he heard the horde of children enter loudly in the hall. They rushed down the stairs and almost smashed their way through the door of his classroom.

Massing around his desk, they stared at him with big, avid eyes, watching his reactions.

Finally opening his eyes, the old teacher smiles. He had spent a long time thinking on which of the many Legends he would tell them. He had finally taken his decision.

He would tell them of the Last Legend, the final chapter of the Dark Times which had forged the world they lived in. The chapter which had freed Hyrule from the tyranny of fear and darkness like a child is freed from his mother at birth.

In pain.


	2. The Calm Before The Storm

Chapter 2 : Calm Before The Storm

Life was harsh in southern lands. Fertility of fields being their sole resource, it forced its inhabitants to work the land to live. Self-sufficiency had its advantages though, but boredom installed itself rather quickly. The young found a fleeting distraction in alcohol, like their brothers and sisters around the world. Horse races were also a relatively good pastime but otherwise this lost part of the kingdom sorely lacked anything interesting.

The wiser, older men of the region knew all too well that this lack of interest given to this region by the rest of the world was still remembered the Shadow Wars, when Evil Incarnate, also known by the name of Ganon, the Emperor of Darkness, had broken his bonds and put the once proud beacon of light and justice that was the Kingdom of Hyrule to a treatment of blood and flame. The Royal Family had been slaughtered, the Army crushed et the people submitted. The conquests had followed. Labrynna, Holodrum... all had fallen one after the other to the terrible armies of reanimated bodies and monsters born of the darkness wielded by Ganon. They had made an example of Lynna City, it what would comme to be known as the Night of the Blood Flows, showing to the rest of the world that resistance had been destroyed. The Massacre of Subrosia had been the final nail on the coffin of freedom, ending the last people which had yet to fall under the Empire's iron fist.

The province of Ordon had been left alone for now, although a few envoys of the Empire regularly visited the region periodically to gather taxes. Taxes that it is worthy of note to point out as extreme, placing the whole population on the verge of famine every year.

This "peace" allowed the people to keep on year after year, like, as an example, this small family that lived in one of the outer farms of Phyrte, the region's only remaining agglomeration.

This family was of an unusual composition. There was Ruffle, the uncle who served as father. Link, the vigorous, turbulent and headstrong in the middle of his teen years and the adopted orphan Kalia for whom he harbored hidden feelings.

All the othere members of the family had died either from war or malady. Mere months before, the youngest and last son of Ruffle had died from Viscera Illness.

It was still early in the morning, but Link was already working in the polato field, trying desperately to make some scavenging animals attacking the plantation. They would most inevitably come back, but if he could at least preserve this part of the field for the day, it was set for harvesting the afternoon so it would be saved.

Its for this reason that, wearing a disguise loosely imitating the Velanor, a efficient predator feared by the scavengers, he ran after the pack shouting and waving a burning torch.

Seeing the beasts trying to run around him and flee, he went to the right to block them and force their path towards the escarpment close to which he knew he would find one of their several hiding caves. Throwing the torch in, he watched as the creatures ran in to save their children.

Knowing fear would keep them away for a while, he sighed and turned around, taking the direction of the small hovel.

It was small in surface, but with two levels. Its walls seemed barely able to sustain their own weight for they were literally eaten by rot, taking the form of green, oozing moss. The roof, made of rush, was in a sorry state too, the twigs fraying in all directions, causing massive infiltrations every rain, which were torrential in the region.

Going through the doorway, Link took off his disguise, throwing the weathered pieces of fur on the bench to the left. Proceeding to pull his feet out of the heavy, old work boots so overused that, had he not stitched more cloth on them, it would have been possible to see his toes.

Hoping to catch the scent of the usual breakfast Kalia had the habit of making every morning, he breathed deeply.

Nothing. That was very strange for him, and he worried instantly.

Making his way to the kitchen with haste, he found nothing but a single note scribbled on a parchment half-hanging on the side of the flimsy wooden table.

Reading it with some difficulty, for while the people of Ordon taught their children the basics of how to write and read there were few opportunities to practice those skills, the young man succeeded in deciphering the handwritten message.

"_Hey Link, we had to go to town. Seems the Impies are there early."_

Knowing they should not have visited for a few more months, the farmer's worries only rose. This could not bode well.


	3. Conscription

Chapter 2 : Conscription

Turning around in an instant, Link grasped his ragged coat and stumbled into his boots while making his way to the door. Barely evading the weapons rack on the wall, he ran outside.

The village was at an hour on foot, but a well guided horse could make it in fifteen minutes by using a shortcut over the Falls Ravines.

So the farmer pushed his fingers between his lips and whistled a short six-notes melody. As soon as the sounds he produced were let loose in the winding plains, a gallop was heard. Running towards the young man, Epona rose a cloud of dust and dead grass. Stopping in front of her master, the mare reared.

Born of a long line older than known by Link, Epona did not carry this name randomly. Indeed, while the actual reasons or origins of this tradition were unknown to its keepers, it had become an habit of the family to name every firstborn mare of every generation this way. Old tales told that this name bore a mystical signification, but its true meaning had been lost to time.

Barely settled on the saddle, the blonde boy spurred his mount, who launched herself towards the north. Instantly, her rider was filled with a deep feeling of absolute freedom, like every time he rode on horseback.

For him, the sensation of the wind caressing his skin as the powerful beast propelled itself through fields and forests, burying its hooves in the loose and fertile soil as easily as in the viscous mud of the rivulets that crisscrossed the region had no equivalent in the Universe. Nothing gave him as much satisfaction that this impression that all was within his grasp, that on a whim et of a simple movement of the arm, he could throw himself at amazing speeds in the direction of his choice, deciding as master of his destiny and that of his trusty steed.

So it is with a mind in ecstasy that Link and Epona made their way first through plantations then between the massive trees of the Ordon Woods. Still as fast as arrows, they reached the Creek of Winds and finally the Erildor Falls.

Charging to the edge of the cliffs, the mare tensed her muscles, bent her knees and shot herself vigorously over the rapids before crashing her hooves on the sand on the far side.

Not slowing down the slighest, they darted in the northern woods, hastily reaching one of the many meandering trails cutting through the forest like as many threads of a giant spiderweb. A short run brought them to the main road leading to the town whose roofs already loomed on the horizon.

Agitation already brewed in the plaza at the center of the town, next to the marketplace. Whatever those imperial visitors wanted, Link was sure nothing could would come out of it.

Leaving Epona at the town's edge, along the trail that would lead him to the heart of the agglomeration, the young man sent her back and made his way through the crowded men, women and children awaiting the inevitable announcements. Fear seeped into their eyes, unsettling the farmer to whom they glanced has he passed by.

As he finally reached the center of the town, his eyes caught two things at the same time. First, Kalia, standing next to his uncle and the mayor. Second, the stage on which two dark figures stood.

As his attention fully focused on them, he immediately understood the dread of the people, for he felt it now.

A tall, towering monster stood next to a frail, bent figure that still managed to be even more frightening than the first. The taller one wore a black plate armor, each part of it jagged and rusted from countless battles, adding to its terrifying aspect. Dark brown stains obviously made of dried blood covered entire swaths of the armor. A huge blade-crested helm hid the face of its wearer except from the jet-black skin of the lower jaw. On the side of his hip, the massive knight bore a mighty ebon blade nearly two meters long with sharp points along the edges. The hilt was bigger than anything Link could ever hope to hold in his own hands one day and buried under woven black silk.

His companion wore barely more than a ragged cloak wrapped around his body, the shadow of his hood hiding much of what most would qualify as the most disgusting face they had ever seen. He stood barely over a meter in height but the impression he gave, this _aura_ he had made him more imposing than his bodyguard. He seemed to suck all around him, the colors seemed to fade, the wind stopped its usually incessant blowing at this time of the year, space itself looking distorted around him. His appalling presence made the very air grow cold around the stage.

Link realised he had arrived at the right on time when the armored one called with a booming voice for the attention of the crowd. All trace of the once bustling talks and shouts died in an instant, first crushed under the immense power of the voice that overwhelmed them, and then killed by the fear and worry filling each heart.

The cloaked man cleared his throat and then started to speak with a high, surprisingly loud tone.

"Citizens of the Shadow Empire, your lord, our lord, the Emperor Ganon the Powerful, has issued a call to arms. A new land has been discovered, a land that freely harbors those few rebels and dissidents who still refuse to accept the rule of our mighty Empire. Like all the world has, or will, this puny country shall fall under our rule. To fuel our armies, half the men over the age of 14 will be taken and enrolled. Our enemies call their lands Termina. Let it be Terminated in darkness, for the Empire!"

At first the crowd stood totally silent, startled at the unexpected announcement. Then the fastest thinkers grasped the meaning of the speech, and realized that their families, their sons and fathers, would be taken away. The voices of the people started going up again, anger and hatred beating fear back to the corners of their mind.

Louder than any other, the mayor called out to the emissary :

"What kind of folly is this? A joke? You mean to kill us all? Wipe us by taking all those we hold dear and send them away, leaving us alone to die out, unable to sustain our farms and families? This won't happen, not in my lifetime!"

A slow, eerie laugh started creeping up from the smaller voyager.

"Not in your lifetime? We can arrange this."

Snapping his finger, he gestured first at an armored soldier next to the stage that, no matter how surprising it may seem considering his imposing size, had not even, along with his three companions, been noticed by the crowd, then at the man who dared stand up against his master's will.

Booming steps were heard soon after, the Iron Knuckles heavy metal boots crashing one after the other on the hard cobblestones. Everyone standing between him and his newly assigned target either moved away or were pushed aside with ease.

A mighty golden axe raised high into the sky as the warrior accelerated into the now clear path. All could read the terror in the poor man's eyes as he resigned himself to his fate, knowing he stood not a chance. He barely had the time to lift his hands skyward in a futile attempt to protect himself before both his arms, along with the upper half of his head, were separated from his body. Blood splattered everywhere, his throat transforming into a fountain of red liquid. His arms flew into the crowd, knocking down several men and women frozen in disbelief. His scalp flew over a young child, the poor boy's face now covered in smashed brains.

Raising the axe and bringing it down again, the armored soldier cut through the now headless but still standing body. The cleaving strike created yet another spraying of bodily fluids, the red now mixing with the yellowish-green of the stomach's contents, soon followed by bits and pieces of gore that went to float in the ever growing pool of disgusting remains.

Dislodging his weapon from the ground, the Iron Knuckle turned around and joined his brothers, scarlet drops still falling from the blade.

The whole crowd, especially those close enough to receive the sprays, stood stunned, totally unable to think or move, for several seconds. A woman's voice was heard soon after. A scream. The mayor's wife slumped to the ground, the sight to much for her old heart, dead.

"This better be a good lesson. You, are dismissed. We will come for our new recruits tomorrow afternoon, be ready."

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><p>So! My first really gory scene translated. And the last direct translation from my original story since it sort of branches off here, because I pushed back an event.<p> 


End file.
